One Thousand Cherry Blossoms
by Tiny Octopus
Summary: A small nation is born in the shadow of Japan and China, coming to serve as a means of trade between her brothers. But when Japan seeks to expand his territory and turn on his brother, she must choose a side and leave the quiet days of her childhood behind. The story of the Ryuukyuu Kingdom; also on A03.


**If you're in the mood for some music, I would like to recommend listening to this while you read: watch?v=mtkBU3bV0tY**

* * *

_Once we meet and talk, we are brothers and sisters._

-Okinawan proverb

Although it may not necessarily be true, I have come to believe that I was born for my brothers.

It was a time when everyone in the world was beginning to want, and wanting is healthy so long as it is not excessive. Some wanted art, some wanted exotic foods and animals that could only come from elsewhere. And my elder brothers, Japan and China, wanted to trade with one another, though by the time I had grown into a young girl, they were no longer speaking to each other.

I was born in the shadow of their beautiful countries, a patchwork of people unified under one flag, the name Ryuukyuu on my lips and all of the teachings of the Heian court and the Ming Dynasty at my disposal. I was skillful and cultured but I was not audacious, and I sought to become a friend and ally to both of my brothers.

I presented myself to China first in brightly-colored robes. "Brother," I said, "I am the Ryuukyuu Kingdom," and gave him many gifts from my home. My elder brother was delighted to see how well I had grown and lavished me with praise and gifts, and though he had yet to truly see me as his equal, I was still pleased.

My other brother was not nearly as warm. We met beneath a canopy of flowering cherry blossom trees. "I am Japan," he said and bowed. He carried a katana at his waist. "It seems you are my younger sister."

"I am the Ryuukyuu Kingdom," I said and bowed. I held a folding fan in my hands. "I suppose I am."

My brother Japan always had ambition in his eyes, full of dreams and ideas but still struggling to find a means to reach them. What he did not create himself he improved, and he worked hard in every endeavor. This ambition, always turned inward, was the reason he was so successful in most all things he attempted. For this, I admired him, and strove to be like him. In those innocent days of my childhood, I never imagined that such ambition could turn into something so dangerous.

* * *

I do not know when Japan and China came to feel the way they do about each other. Perhaps it happened before I was born. But for as long as I could remember, their relationship had been strained, beginning with misunderstandings and hurt feelings that escalated into conflict. Though Japan had closed himself off from the world, he still sought to trade with his brother, and approached me for this purpose.

"Why do you not speak directly to China?" I proposed, "He is our brother. Surely he will understand."

"He is not my brother," he said firmly, "Nor is he yours."

I loved my brother despite how cold he was at times. But beneath such displays was a kind heart that was searching for a purpose and place in the world. Though he was the elder, he held the same child-like curiosity that I did, wanting to know, wanting to see, wanting to have, wanting. But something in him had changed. No longer was he content to compete with China as a civilization. He wanted, and that want turned his ambitious eyes outward towards our brother and those in the west. I knew, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he would not stop until he had what he desired, or until he lost everything in the process.

* * *

"Sister, I plan to invade Korea," he told me. He brought gifts. "And from there, I intend to conquer China, as well. This will mean good things for both of us."

"You are asking for my help in the invasion," I mused. I did not accepts the gifts. "I'm sorry. I belong to you and China, brother. It would be wrong of me to go behind his back." He tried to convince me further, and we talked in circles for almost a day. By the end, he finally realized that I would not join him, and he changed again.

He turned his ambitious eyes upon me.

The gifts long forgotten, my elder brother threw himself at me and pinned me to the floor, his hands holding my wrists in a bruising grip. "Elder brother," I whimpered, "You are hurting me." Sweat rolled down his neck in the summer heat. He lowered his lips to my ear.

"If you will not give me what I want, sister," he said, "Then I will take it."

* * *

Japan began his invasion with me. I told my people not to fight him even when, under the pretense of mercy and allowing autonomy, he began to take from me. "Life is a treasure," I said as the treasures of our history were taken from our castles and my people became subordinate to my brother's laws. After his failed attempts to incorporate Korea, he became bitter, and sought comfort in knowing that I would always be at home waiting for him. We would sit in front of the mirror and he would brush my hair and smooth the rumples from my robe, one made by his people and not mine.

He took control, telling me what I could and could not do. He took land then, little by little. My brother became the master of both my house and his, and then I had no home, as my connections to China were severed and I became Japan's entirely. At last, one fateful day, he took my name as well.

"You are Okinawa," he said, wrapping my hair around his fingers and bringing it to his lips, "My Okinawa."

"Life is a treasure," I told myself, tears in my eyes. Perhaps I was not a pacifist, but simply a coward.

* * *

Soon, my brother was meeting with foreigners from far away and speaking of strange futures that could only be reached after wading through seas of corpses. Sometimes, he would be gone for many days, only to return with a determined smile. Sometimes, the foreigners would come to him, and Japan would prepare a feast and a celebration for each visit. Not once did I speak to the fair-skinned men who conspired with my brother, but he would come to see me after each meeting.

"I will show you," he promised, "The world will be wonderful. You will be proud to be my sister."

I thought often of old, simpler days, when we sat beneath cherry blossoms and wanted only what could be obtained through peace, but I knew those days were gone forever.

* * *

My brother left with the foreigners one day. "When I return, it means that we have won," he said. I begged him to stay, but it was too late for him to withdraw from the theater of war. From the porch of my brother's home, I looked out over the ocean and saw death and ruin, a river of blood flowing into the ocean. Each morning, I hoped that I would wake from a nightmare.

I could not sleep, standing on the porch of our home, staring out into sea. In the day, I heard nothing but gunfire across the Pacific. In the evening, the waters turned red with the blood of the fallen. In the night, I stood under the stars and waited thinking, surely, he will return. Surely he will see what a mistake this is. And one day, he did return, but not in the way I had hoped.

He handed me a grenade.

"All of your people will need one," he insisted, "Just in case."

War had come to our shores, advancing upon what was once my home. Surely, I thought, he will defend it like it is his own. Surely, he will not let my people suffer. My brother walked south with me, his eyes alight with sunset and bonfires. I believed he would protect us.

I was wrong.

* * *

In the coming days, I sat in the house my brother had claimed and watched as the foreign ships came closer. My people were frightened. "What will we do?" they asked me, and I had no answer to give them. I was their nation; I was expected to have hope even when they did not. But I was tired. As I watched the ships with their huge guns and strange flags, I told them what Japan had told me.

"They will fight us," I said, "And they will kill us. They will kill everyone they can. They will burn our homes and rape and pillage until we are nothing." My people wept. "Kill yourselves," I echoed the words of my brother, "If they find you, you may be killed, or you may be taken prisoner, or maybe worse. Do not let them take you. Kill yourselves."

Life is precious, I remembered myself having said once, in a time that seemed so long ago. Life is precious, so do not fight.

When had everything gone so wrong?

* * *

It is one thing to read of the horrors of war and another entirely to live them.

There was fire.

There were mothers trying to hold their infants, arms riddled with holes.

There were fathers who gathered their wounded families so that they may die together.

There were children so desperate for water that they drank the wet mud.

There were so many who jumped from cliffs and blew up their homes and slashed open their stomachs and throats and wrists and so much death, so much death that by the time it was over, I truly believed that the dead outnumbered the living. I screamed for my brother, asking him why, why did he leave us here, how could he do this to us, where was he now?

A foreigner carrying a starred and striped flag, pale skin and golden hair, saw my dirt-covered hands and my tear-stained face and all of the wounds that I thought would never heal and he took me into his arms and told me that he was sorry, so sorry, that he never wanted it to be like this.

I could not understand war. How can they claim that they do not want the death and destruction when that is all that will inevitably come? But I did not fight him. I was tired of fighting. I never wanted to fight again.

Rage towards my brother turned to shame as I realized that the foreigner would go north. With no home left, I fled to him, weak and broken, asking for his forgiveness. "Please, please don't fight anymore," I begged as he held me in his arms, "Please, brother." But he didn't listen. My brother's ambitious eyes took on a red light of rage, and I wondered if it was my fault that he continued to fight.

* * *

My brother had radiation burns along the right side of his body, ugly and blistering.

I could not bring myself to look at him.

At night, he cried very softly, not wanting me to know of his pain.

I held his hand while he slept.

* * *

The golden-haired foreigner who once attacked us so viciously moved in with us for some time, building back onto the ruins. Japan spoke little in those days, and I spoke less. Though it embarrassed me, my brother recovered much more quickly, and had to do much of the work without me, as I was still weak and sickly, hardly able to raise a hammer.

He handed me paper.

"Do you remember how to make cranes?" he asked me.

I didn't.

He taught me again.

"Make one thousand," he said, "And then make a wish."

I did, but my wish never came true.

* * *

In the care of the foreign man, I struggled to understand how hands that could do so much harm could also heal and soothe. He spoke with Japan often, and I wondered what they talked about. I hoped for peace.

"Okinawa," my brother said one day, the ambition gone from his eyes, "This is America." It was the first time I had heard the foreigner's name. "We have agreed that you will live with him for now."

This I did not understand. For what reason would my brother abandon me? Had I disappointed him? I begged him to let me stay, told him I would never trouble him again.

"Please," I sobbed, "I don't want to go, brother. I'm scared." He said nothing. The foreigner took my hand and smiled, telling me that it would be alright now, but I still cried and reached for my brother. He never looked at me.

* * *

I came to know America quite well and saw that he and my brother had much in common. How strange is that, I thought, for those two to be so much alike? But they were both full of passion and ambition and dangerous wanting that could hurt or heal depending on how it was used.

My brother visited often, sometimes with gifts, sometimes with worries for my health, sometimes to scold me. "You must take better care of yourself," he said, though he would still coddle me.

"Can I come home soon?" I asked each time, and he would always look away and tell me that I couldn't yet. We made cranes together.

Despite my protests, he would always leave too soon, looking at America with an expression I could not place, and America would smile sadly back and put a hand on his shoulder. It took many years, but I eventually came to realize that what I had once thought was abandonment was actually guilt.

* * *

"What do you think of your brother, Okinawa?" America asked me once when he found me on the floor in his hallway, a pile of paper cranes beside me and another one forming underneath my hands.

I wore western clothing now, shirts and skirts instead of yukata and kimono. They were offered to me as gifts, and though I initially refused them, I was made to accept them when Japan found out. "Do not make him angry," he said firmly, "Do not do anything at all to upset him. Do you understand?" He had yelled and I had cried, and when he realized it, he had tried to embrace me, but I had pushed him away.

I remember the pain in his eyes then, a pain that rivaled the day he'd gotten his burns.

"Okinawa?" America asked and I startled to attention. I apologized before answering.

"I love him," I said.

"But what do you think of him?"

"He is my brother," I said uneasily, "I love him."

He nodded. There were many things that America said, but there were many things he did not say, as well. He did not say that he had siblings or that he understood what I meant, but I heard it all the same.

One thousand cranes later, I made another wish. When nothing happened, I kept making more.

* * *

In spring, I was allowed to return home. I did so quietly with my eyes on my feet as I walked, stopping short of the porch. My brother stood above me and we were still and silent for what felt like a very long time.

Finally, he said, "Okinawa," and I looked up at him. I saw my brother; his eyes were bright with hope, light shining from a future that needed a bridge forged from peace. He held open his arms and I fell into them. "Welcome home."

* * *

My brother and I still argue sometimes, mostly over politics.

We try not to, after all we've been through together, but it still happens. My people are still displeased with his, after all, and his people are still indifferent towards mine. All of the wounds that I was sure would never heal have become so much smaller than they were, but are still sore some days. In Japan, they lie to their children, my people tell me, their textbooks are full of propaganda and lies. They will never know the truth of their brothers and sisters who suffered on their behalf, the ones who sacrifices themselves needlessly for a people who did not even want them.

But at the end of every argument, we manage to apologize. This is a great feat for my brother, who is still apologizing to the siblings he does not want to admit are siblings to the east. These apologies are poor; "If I did something to you, I am sorry," and "It's not really my fault, but I am sorry," and so on and so forth, for many years. I wish he would apologize properly, but it does bring me happiness that he can express himself so freely to me. I have faith that, one day, he will make things right. Even though my brother is not well-liked by the others, I am still proud to be his sister.

Our relationship is no less complicated than it was many years ago, and I have come to accept that the days of our youth are ones we can never return to. It seems that everyone wants something, and that people want most what they cannot find close to them. I have seen dangerous wanting and how it can tear the world apart, but I have seen wanting of other kinds, wanting for love and life, wanting great enough to rebuild cities and heal dying nations. I continue to dream of a future in which all siblings can love one another, and all of the world is happy.

I am Okinawa of the Far East, sister of Japan and China, lover of tradition and warm summers.

* * *

In the study of my brother's home, I listen to the sound of his koto and watch his fingers dance across the strings.

"You were wrong," I tell him, coming to sit beside him, "It was three thousand cranes, not one thousand. One for every world." He stops playing. "You must make three thousand cranes for your wish to come true."

"What did you wish for?" he asks quietly.

I lean my head on his shoulder. "To see you smile again."

* * *

_"I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world."_

-Sadako Sasaki


End file.
